Tag: On The Road

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My Last Nirvana Show, 1991

In late 1991 I was back in Oak Harbor visiting shipmates and spent some time down in Seattle partying and catching as much live music as I could. A group of us lucked out and scored Halloween night tickets to Nirvana at the Paramount Theater. It was about a month or so after the release of “Nevermind” and the buzz was pretty intense. I distinctly remember we didn’t dress up (after much discussion about whether or not it was cool to dress up for Halloween), it was a great show and we went out afterwards to Pioneer Square and maybe Re-bar…

I recently ran across this limited edition vinyl of the show, snagged it without even giving it a second thought and it brought back a flood of memories. I absolutely recall Kris scolding folks for not dressing up and the show was as much of a banger as I remember it being. This is definitely one of the live shows I cherish most because of the hype and energy at the time.

I later had plans to see ’em in August of ’92 when I was back in town, but alas that show was canceled due to Kurt and Courtney welcoming Frances Bean into the world. As a result, this wound up being the last time I saw them live.

I was pretty lucky… I had a somewhat charmed life living out west and got to devour a lot of great experiences, with this one being right up there near the top.

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Diamond Head, O’ahu

Puka shell necklace, bucket hat, Birdwell Beach Britches… quintessential late 80s/early 90s beach attire. I think that’s my Tag Huer I bought over in Hong Kong that I wore to death. Petty Officer Small… just a sailor doing sailor stuff.

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A Sailor’s Prayer

I randomly ran across this on the internet this morning. I’m about 99% certain I’m the sailor on the far right. The sailor on the far left is Greg “Soupy” Campbell, next to him on the right is Craig “The Boz” Bosley, and between us is an AD (engines/powerplants) whose name I can’t recall… but I’m about 99.99% certain I’m the one on the right, and this was taken in Hong Kong on my first cruise in the VA-165 Boomers onboard the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk (CV-63).

We lived life like you’d expect us to, way out there and 100 mph at all times. 

Whether I wake up in Thailand,
or Norfolk or Guam
or wake up in Subic with half my stuff gone. 
wake up in a hot tub, butt-naked and drunk,
lord, let me find my way back to my bunk
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The Greatest Final Paragraph Ever Written

“So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.”

— Jack Kerouac – “On The Road”